Demography and development

Demography

The convergence of the twain

America and Europe are converging demographically. That is a reasonable conclusion to draw from two articles in The Economist this week.

For decades, it was thought that America was distinctive because of its relatively high fertility rate and large number of immigrants, most of them from ethnic minorities. These things were thought of as linked because immigrants had large families (at first, anyway: later, they adopted the demographic habits of locals). Europe was the opposite: low fertility; fewer immigrants or ethnic minorities.

But Britain­­ – or, at least, England and Wales - is becoming more American. On December 11ththe latest batch of numbers from the 2011 census showed a near doubling in the proportion of people who define themselves members of an ethnic minority. The share of those calling themselves “white British” fell from 88% in 2001 to 81% in 2011. Minority populations are also spreading further throughout the country, with big rises in cities and suburbs outside London. In 2001, around 80% of black Africans in England lived in the capital. Now the share is only 58%. Meanwhile, the overall fertility rate in Britain has been rising: it is now around 2, just below the rate needed to keep the population stable over the long term. Britain of course is not the same as Europe. But France and the Netherlands, to take two examples, display similar trends.

Meanwhile, America is going in the opposite direction. Its fertility rate falling and is now down is 1.9: below the replacement rate and below those of Britain and France. Because of higher fertility earlier on, the American population is still rising and will be 400m in 2050, according to new figures from the Census Bureau. But that is 9% less than was projected for 2050 four years ago. Again, there seems to be a connection with immigration. With migrants squeezed by slow growth and increasing hostility in parts of America, more are returning home. Net migration in 2011 was only 700,000, the Census Bureau reckons: the lowest figure for more than a decade. America still has many more foreign-born residents than any European country and their numbers are growing, because they tend to have larger families. But the number of, say, Hispanics is not being boosted further by immigration, whereas in Britain and France it is.

Much of this may be connected with economic austerity, which has slowed down or reversed immigration and persuaded many young people to postpone marriage or child-bearing. So it could change. But at the moment, the demographic convergence across the Atlantic is real.

America has largely Mexican and Hispanic immigrants. Catholic. Few Muslims. No bridge to Africa. And is NOT impacted by the Arab Spring, Syrian War, Iraq, Afghanistan immigrants or Middle East Immigrants.

Britain has Pakistani, African, North African and Middle East Immigrants.
And is impacted by the Arab Spring with large Muslim immigration surges.
And now 'Muhummad' with 10 variant spellings is the most common male baby name in the UK.
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Immigration is NOT generic.

The Motherland will be influenced by the type of immigrants with long-term powerful generational consequence.

It seems like this is a temporary issue for the US. We are in the middle of one of the worst recessions in recent history, that would tend to lower the birth rate of the natives. There is less incentive to emigrate or to illegally emigrate to the US as there is a temporary loss of economic opportunity. When times get better natives will resume copulation. We already here bipartisan support for wooing more legal immigrants so that should change as well.

"bipartisan support for wooing more legal immigrants"?
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That sounds cool - I wouldn't mind working/ doing business again in the US if the paperwork was less onerous, there were less delay in visa processing & the legal risks were less.
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Indeed, we have "freedom of labour" in the EU, Switzerland, Norway & Iceland, which gives all citizens the right to work in all these countries (and we don't have to fill any paperwork, or even notify a single bureaucrat in the process). It's just a case of advertising a vacancy (or finding skilled people) and offering work to the most skilled & fitting candidates (regardless of citizenship). For workers, it's just a case of applying for the job, flying out for an interview... and if I were given a job in Helsinki say, all I would have to do is go online, book a flights & an apartment, and I could start the job next Monday.
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And it's precisely the same with registering and starting a business - I can go online and register a business today, organise premises (e.g. hot-desk rental & an apartment) fly out to Zurich or Oslo next Wednesday, open up a business bank account and start trading straight away.
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By contrast, if I wanted to work in the US, there are formal requirements for my employer to actively discriminate against employing me (and they are opening themselves to legal challenge from other applicants, or from immigration authorities, if they do make the choice of employing me). We would then face an expensive drawn out (6 months or more) process of applying for & obtaining a work visa - and a large proportion of applications are simply rejected (even at later stages). And then there's the hassle of embassy interviews and a hundred other bits of paperwork with different bureaucratic bodies (from SEVICE to health records to questionnaires on my latest terrorism activities, etc). It's fucking hell - I wouldn't even try to work in the US unless I was offered an extremely generous compensation package. The process of trying to start a business in the US as a non-resident is even worse.
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If Americans are finally coming around to the idea that immigrants aren't all bad, perhaps we could have a freedom of labour (& freedom of business initiation) agreement across the US, EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland & Canada? (Ideally, we would want to extend it further - but this would be a start.)
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Is there any political constituency in the US for establishing this? It would definitely be good for economic growth across the western world.